Fear Of Flying

Are you afraid to fly? I certainly was. I don’t quite remember at what age I developed this fear of flying but I did notice that it got progressively worse after having children.

Becoming a mother made me think more about this fear as I didn’t want any of my children to inherit my fear of flying or anything else that might hold them back from living life to the full.

Although I am able to manage this fear while on a plane journey, it did influence my choice of destination when we were planning our family holidays. Any destination that would involve a long flight was out of the question. The only long flights that I have taken were those of the necessary kind like a new work posting, a wedding or visiting a sick loved one. I often envied people who always said that the best part of the journey for them was the time they spent on a plane.

“It is so exciting!” they would say to me, “Don’t you think so?”

“Definitely not!” would come my shocked answer.

I always thought that there isn’t much I could do about this fear until I learnt about NLP. NLP has made it possible for me to be able to have a reasonably relaxed plane journey, to stop fretting and worrying weeks before the upcoming journey and to be comfortable with the fact that I have techniques at my disposal that will instantly calm my nerves should I experience any signs of panic.

The interesting thing about fear is that it is quite personal. What I mean by that is this:

Not everyone who is afraid of flying experiences this fear in the same way. This becomes evident when we use NLP questions designed to get to the root of the fear.

For example, the root of my fear of flying was linked to a fear of heights. The awareness that I am suspended in mid air, thousands of kilometres above ground, was extremely unnerving. Even a simple NLP technique that involved replacing this negative image that I held in my minds’ eye was enough to make me instantly calmer. It is really the thought here that counts.

For some people, like my sister, the underlying fear is being in small closed spaces where, it is not possible for them to get out at will. They feel the same way in a lift as in a plane.

Some individuals become afraid of flying following a negative experience while on a plane. A client of mine developed fear of flying after she heard the news about 9/11 while flying back home from a holiday in Turkey. That was when she experienced her first fear. Since then her fear got so much worse that she needed tranquilizers before she could board a plane. In this case playing around with the submodalities of the images she created in her head in relation to flying was helpful.

Another client I worked with experienced fear of flying for a completely different reason. His had trust issues. He had a problem with placing his life in the hands of a complete stranger, the pilot.

“Are you afraid of riding on the train?” I remember asking him.

“No” came his quick response.

“Is that because you are friends with the train driver?”

“No, he is a complete stranger to me.” my client said.

“So you are trusting your life in the hands of a complete stranger!” I said with an element of surprise, “why not on a plane?”

“Wow! You are absolutely right!” he said with a smile. “I never realised that I indeed have been trusting strangers with my life on a regular basis and am still alive and well.”

This simple belief change was enough for my client to get rid of his fear of flying, just like replacing the picture in my head of a plane suspended in mid air with that of my living room, was enough for me to fly comfortably and without fear.

What are the reasons underlying your fear of flying? What thoughts, pictures, sounds or feelings do you associate with this fear? Did you  ever stop to consider those? You might find a clue that will help you get rid of this fear or at least control it instead of being controlled by it.

Have a pleasant flight!

Recommended reading: The Easy Way to Enjoy Flying by Allen Carr

Exam Fever

If you happen to have a son or daughter sitting their last year of school, you will know that at the moment IB students are almost done with their exams and A level students will soon be on their study leave. Yes. Exam fever is here.

Does your son or daughter suffer from exam fever?
Do they get stressed, nervous and even have panic attacks, as the exam date gets nearer? 

It is quite some time ago that I sat my A level exams. However, I still vividly remember my experience. I found it difficult to fall asleep the night before the exam. I tossed and turned and tried to banish, in vain, all the negative scenarios that had crept into my head. On the morning of the exam I was a bundle of nerves and could not eat a thing. In order to keep my energy levels up I used to suck a dextrose tablet every now and then. I used to look with envy at the other students who seemed calm. I could not understand how they could stay so calm and chat away to each other like any other day while I was almost falling to pieces.  I used to ask myself “How do they do that?”

I found the answer to my question 16 years later when I discovered NLP.

Representational Systems and Submodalities

 We take in the world through our five senses and, using the information we gather, we make internal representations of the world. In NLP these are called “Representational Systems” and the five senses are called ‘Modalities” and they are:

V = Visual (sense of sight)
A = Auditory (sense of hearing)
K = Kinaesthetic (sense of touch and feeling)
O = Olfactory (sense of smell)
G = Gustatory (sense of taste)

From an NLP perspective, we concentrate on the first three senses, as the olfactory and gustatory sense, tend to be included under the Kinaesthetic System.

Let’s examine each sensory modality in a little more detail. Visually for example, the pictures you see can have a specific location, be bright or dim in colour or black and white, moving or still, big or small and so on. Similarly the sounds you hear can vary in tonality, volume or speed and the source can be internal, as in hearing your own internal dialogue, or external, as the voice of someone other than yourself. The same applies to your feelings, which again can vary in intensity, location (where in your body you feel it) and size. These finer distinctions are not a coincidence and they are referred to in NLP as “Submodalities”.

These submodalities are unique to each individual and they are the way we code our experiences. When you change the submodalities of an experience, you change how you feel about it.

The following is an example of exam fever and an NLP approach to curbing it:

Due to the type of course my daughter was interested in studying, some of the universities she applied to require that she sit a special scientific exam, BMAT, before her application could be considered. This exam did not so much depend on knowledge as much as on aptitude and skills. The only way she could prepare for it was to do as many example papers as possible. It was also a very high standard test and the score scale was designed so that academically outstanding applicants would score around 5 out of 10. Getting an average grade was something my daughter was not used to. She prepares well, works hard and aims high. Therefore when she consistently wasn’t getting a 9 or 10 she decided that she was not capable and, therefore, a failure. As the exam date got nearer she was getting more and more frustrated, agitated and in an almost near panic state. I decided that it was time to intervene and see what  internal representations my daughter was making about this exam that was getting her into such a negative state.

“What comes to your mind when I say BMAT?” I asked her one afternoon.

“I get a picture in my head.” She answered.

“What kind of picture?” I asked

“Well, I am in the school hall where we normally sit our exams.” She said.

“Where do you see this picture?” I asked again.

“It is right in front of me.” She answered.

“Right. Do you see yourself in the picture or are you looking through your own eyes?” I said

“I see myself in the picture.” She said.

Knowing from previous exercises that my daughter’s positive feelings are usually associated with pictures in which she is looking through her own eyes, I asked her the following.

“ Can you change your picture so you are able to look through your own eyes?”

“Yes I can,” she said.  Then quite unexpectedly she suddenly exclaimed, “Oh mum I am looking at the paper but I can’t see the questions, that is why I am in a panic”

“Ok. I want you to make some changes in the picture so you are able now to see the questions. Can you do that?” I asked

“Yes, yes I can.” She said after a short pause.

“Mum, I am fine,” she then said. “Now that I am able to see the questions I feel so much better. I can do this” and walked off to practice a few more papers.

On the day of the exam she was reasonably calm and went ahead and did her best in the BMAT exam. All it took was slight key adjustments in the submodalities that she was associating with her future experience of this exam.

So next time your child is in a panic state about an upcoming exam, bring to their awareness the internal representations that they are making in their mind in relation to this exam. Make some changes in the submodalities and see which key adjustments create the positive emotion that they desire.

In addition to the above, creating a resourceful anchor like I mentioned in my previous blog can also help put them in a more positive and motivated state. Sometimes simply reminding them of a past achievement or success story can do the trick. It brings to their awareness that they already have the resources they need to succeed.

Recommended reading: De-stress for Exams by Summersdale Publishers